There is a freewheeling energy to a Stephen Kostanski movie, a feeling that you’ve walked in on a group of friends partaking in a grand game of make-believe. It’s not that what was filmed was spontaneous, but that there’s the sense that it wasn’t filmed at all. It’s just beaming into its audience’s heads, a cosmic signal from a long-abandoned video store. Kostanski’s deliberate and detailed aesthetic choices are proof that there’s an encompassing plan, but the playful daring emanating from each of his low-budget projects also feels tougher to sustain as the films get larger. With Deathstalker, Kostanski attempts to bring his loose, gleeful style to the sword and sorcery genre, and mostly succeeds, giving us another midnight movie essential.
Based on the 1983 Roger Corman film of the same name, Kostanski’s version follows Deathstalker (action staple Daniel Bernhardt), a warrior and scavenger living in a world beset by war. He spends his days roaming battlefields and picking valuables off the corpses. One day, he finally picks up something he shouldn’t have—an amulet with a dark history tied to the kingdom’s oldest enemies—and he literally can’t get rid of it. It’ll keep coming back to him until he dies or until he performs an arcane spell to break the curse. So, with the help of a flirty thief (Christina Orjalo) and a diminutive sorcerer (played in costume by Laurie Field, voiced by Patton Oswalt), Deathstalker sets out to break this curse, and unknowingly walks into a date with destiny.Â
There are a lot of classic sword-and-sorcery beats here, from the reluctant hero to the quest for redemption to a weird little guy named “Doodad” just following you around, helping out with magic. Those nostalgic for 1970s and 1980s fantasy films of this stripe, for the age of Beastmaster, will find lots to love here. But Deathstalker is at its best when Bernhardt plays the title role like a put-upon, working-class grave robber just trying to get a monkey off his back, and Kostanski knows when to step back and let that irreverence shine through.
Irreverence is a key part of the Psycho Goreman filmmaker’s toolkit, and Deathstalker‘s weak point is that these moments have never felt less at home. Certain scenes featuring grand pronouncements from villains while the heroes are talking like regular people are a chuckle-worthy juxtaposition, but Kostanski’s script wants to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to serious fantasy and scattershot comedy.
Yet these growing pains, as a filmmaker stretches his shtick into a new genre, are often overshadowed by the sheer force of the primary-colored mayhem erupting onscreen. Centering Bernhardt’s skills as a stunt performer and martial artist, set piece after set piece explodes with color, movement, and creatures that both evoke the 1980s and strive to push the throwback vibe to new extremes. The fights are fun, the monsters are beautifully realized, and the sheer number of genre tropes this film packs into its 100 minutes is enough to make the most battleworn Dungeon Master drop their jaw.
Though his pop culture homages are often what get viewers in the door, Kostanski has always been after something more than revitalizing old aesthetics. Like his low-budget heroes before him, the filmmaker captures the innate urgency that comes from making something with your hands and beaming it out in the world. There’s still something electric about being in the trenches of the indie genre world, and Deathstalker proves that power is still there even as the films get a little bit bigger.Â
Director: Steven Kostanski
Writer: Steven Kostanski
Starring: Daniel Bernhardt, Patton Oswalt, Christina Orjalo, Paul Lazenby, Nina Bergman
Release Date: October 10, 2025
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